Larson Second Yet Again

Kyle Larson has been a familiar face in second place and that’s where he finished again Sunday in the Camping World 500 at Phoenix Raceway.

Larson did his best to run down leader and eventual winner Ryan Newman on a green-white-checkered finish but could not get around him and was forced to once again settle for second.

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver has finished runner-up in four of the last five Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series races including the last three. The last driver to finish runner-up in three straight races was Carl Edwards in November 2011

“This one stings because I feel like I was in the best spot out of anybody there to line up fourth on two tires,” Larson explained of the final restart. “But, it’s really, really cool to be the point leader right now. That was a goal of mine going into today.

“So, thanks to everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing for all your hard work. We’ll hopefully continue to have this speed in our race cars and maybe close some of these races out.”

Despite his frustration n Sunday, Larson remains upbeat about his overall performance and that of CGR. Teammate Jamie McMurray has also been strong in the early going of 2017.

The effort provides Larson, who is now the series points leader, and the team with a great deal of optimism that he feels will help keep things heading in the right direction and one that will eventually lead to Victory Lane.

“Like I've been saying all of this early year, we've never had that speed,” he said. “It's a lot of fun right now. I'm sure, you know, if I ran second for the next eight weeks, yeah, it's probably going to grow old. But, yeah, it's so cool to be one of the fastest cars every week. I feel like I've got a shot to win every week at a racetrack like here and Vegas where I don't normally run good, and challenge for wins. And Daytona, I suck on superspeedways.

“It's been a lot of fun to start this year. I just hope we can continue to work hard, be consistent, be mistake free on pit road and on the racetrack. If we can just keep doing that, the wins are going to come. I could easily have four wins right now. Just got to keep working hard.”